From the outset of the Iraq war, Republican leaders and their amen corner in the right-wing media have sought to calm squeamish Americans by favorably comparing the violence there to life in U.S. cities. Now, John March, a developer planning (believe it or not) a "Disneyland-style" theme park in Baghdad, says the carnage in the Iraqi capital is no different than the "drive-bys" in Southern California. But while grotesque, the analogy is not novel: it has already been repeatedly deployed by the GOP's best and brightest, including presidential nominee John McCain.
As ThinkProgress reported this morning, March's company Ride and Show Engineering is hoping to build the "Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience." Fast-tracked by the Pentagon, the amusement park would be a showpiece of a $1 billion "zone of influence" designed as a buffer around the new $700 million U.S. embassy.
Downplaying the risks of being gunned down while waiting in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl or running over an IED while driving a bumper car, RSE's March declared:

"Well, you live here in Southern California and there's drive-bys and everything else. So there's danger everywhere, and I think the key thing is this will be tremendous for Baghdad."

If it seems like contractor John March sounds like an anchor for Fox News, that's because he does. Back on August 26, 2003, Fox's Brit Hume reassured his viewers that liberal California was a much more dangerous place for Americans than occupied Iraq:

"Two hundred and seventy seven U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that, statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California...which is roughly the same geographical size. The most recent statistics indicate California has more than 2,300 homicides each year, which means about 6.6 murders each day. Meanwhile, U.S. troops have been in Iraq for 160 days, which means they are incurring about 1.7, including illness and accidents, each day."

In Hume's defense, he was only parroting the line of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for whom Baghdad in June 2003 was a cake-walk compared to Washington, DC:

"You got to remember that if Washington, D.C., were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month. There's going to be violence in a big city."

It wasn't just the Bush administration extolling the allure of a Baghdad safe haven for America's urban dwellers. The President Republican allies in Congress, too, began chanting the mantra.
For example, on February 9, 2006, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) told an audience of constituents that Baghdad was much like the Big Apple:

"As we go through the city of Baghdad, it was like being in Manhattan. I mean, I'm talking about bumper to bumper traffic, talking about shopping centers, talking about restaurants, talking about video stores, talking about guys selling (inaudible) on the street corner, talking about major hotels.
And so, at that moment, people must be (inaudible) resilient and you would never know that there was a war going on."

In May 2006, it was Iowa Republican Steve King who took up the charge. Appearing on Westwood One radio with reliable right-wing water carrier Monica Crowley, King asked, "What really is the level of violence?" and wrongly concluded it was lower in Iraq than in Washington DC. Echoing King, the conservative blog Red State snarkily argued the next day that it was "time to pull out of Wisconsin":

"There were 28 shootings this past weekend in Milwaukee. After 175 years of occupation, we are seemingly unable to extract ourselves from the quagmire that apparently is Wisconsin. I say it is time America cut its losses and pulled out of Wisconsin NOW."

During an April 2007 visit to Iraq, Indiana Republican Mike Pence grew nostalgic, comparing Baghdad to his Hoosier home state:

"I told reporters afterward that it was just like any open-air market in Indiana in the summertime."

John McCain ally Lindsay Graham (R-SC) concurred with Pence's assessment. The Baghdad bizarre he visited under heavy U.S. guard was not only safe, but offered great bargains for the smart shopper:

"We went to the market and were just really warmly welcomed. I bought five rugs for five bucks."

(A year later, Graham persists in his view that the grass is greener in Iraq. On February 26, 2008, Senator Graham announced that, "The truth is that political reconciliation in Iraq is going better there than it is here at home because of better security.")
Then there's John McCain. McCain, too, praised the serenity of life in Iraq on that same April Fool's Day trip in 2007. Wearing a bulletproof vest and guarded by "100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead," McCain briefly toured a Baghdad market to demonstrate that the American people were "not getting the full picture." As ThinkProgress detailed:

McCain recently claimed that there "are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today." In a press conference after his Baghdad tour, McCain told a reporter that his visit to the market today was proof that you could indeed "walk freely" in some areas of Baghdad.

In March 2008, Senator McCain returned to a tried and untrue Republican talking point: Iraq is no more dangerous than most major American cities. McCain announced, "There's problems in America with safe neighborhoods as we well know." In this case, at least, even McCain realized his statement was non-sensical on its face and sounded the retreat. "I'm not making that comparison, because it's much more deadly in Iraq obviously," he said, adding, "But it's kind of the same theory."
John McCain's theory, similarly articulated by the would-be Baghdad theme park developer, is America should maintain a permanent presence there because that the Iraqi capital is no more dangerous than the typical large U.S. city. Hopefully, residents of California, Washington DC, New York, Indiana, Wisconsin and everywhere else in America will tell John McCain otherwise in November.